The birth of vertical videos is the outcome of a necessity, an urge created by the advent of cutting-edge smartphones. Since 80% of the social media users are happy with browsing through their mobile phones (61% in Smartphones), the advertisers, social media companies are forced to rediscover their formats to fit the bill seamlessly.

1. Why vertical videos are necessary for mobile first website designs?
The year was 2017 when the videos titled their axis. The birth of vertical videos is the outcome of a
necessity, an urge created by the advent of cutting-edge smartphones. Since 80% of the social media
users are happy with browsing through their mobile phones (61% in Smartphones), the advertisers,
social media companies are forced to rediscover their formats to fit the bill seamlessly.
What is Vertical Video?
Contrast to the cinema and TV screens, here the videos are not in landscape or widescreen formats.
The frame is rotated by 90 degrees and the content is made to fit that screen without causing any
instability to the user. This insurgency happened because people unsurprisingly tend to hold their
phones vertically. Considering the generation’s behaviour, the technology here consciously started
to cater to the vertical world of mobile users.
Changes in Social Media
By 2017 itself, the prominent social media houses like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and
YouTube provided support for vertical videos that too with no black borders. A steady increase in the
number of LIVE videos on social media encourages this vertical video format since it helps in
engaging the users to react or comment without making any efforts. Stats indicate that on Snapchat,
the full-screen vertical video ads take 9x higher completion rate than the ordinary horizontal mobile
video ads. It also gets 2x higher visual attention than the landscape ones.

2. The world went vertical… Are you?
If your video has great content, yet plays in landscape format, it gains lesser attention than a
customary vertical video with a run-of-the-mill content. Gone are the days where you can share a
video content that has been produced for cinema, TV to your users who are using smartphones.
Now, they demand content exclusively designed for their medium or else they are ready to reach
someone who can weave that magic, that additional personal touch. Lately, even the movie trailers,
music videos are releasing additional and exclusive vertical format videos to tap into the fan base of
this new-fangled video format, which is still very much embryonic.
Embrace Vertical videos in mobile-first designs
Apart from social media, if you are crafty enough to design your business website as a mobile first
design you should understand that it should possess only vertical videos. Since already, the vertical
video uprising is on the verge of changing how things work in social media, it is only ingenious of you
to adapt to that change. Landscape social media video formats are slowly becoming obsolete and
your Facebook timeline today may disclose the same.
Your mobile-first website design should definitely have video content. In fact, content in all the
formats such as text, images, interactive, audio, etc. Even if your users are accessing your mobile
first website design through their desktops, the vertical videos will not be a downer, if the contents
of them fit the bill perfectly.

3. With an improved conversion rate, vertical videos are already an influential marketing tool to gain
attention. By welcoming them in your mobile-first website design, you are only increasing the
mileage of it on a far-reaching scale.